Tag: professional looking

WordPress is an easy to use tool for designing your own blog. The versatility and ease of WordPress cannot be matched by other blog options. WordPress is a easy way to quickly start a professional looking blog. Read on for some great tips and tricks on using the website.

If the title for a post is long, try cleaning up the permalink. Extremely long URLs are usually made up of excessively descriptive titles. Be sure to select only the keywords from your long titles to create your permalinks.

Don’t choose a design that’s identical to what others that have a WordPress website use. While it is tempting to save time, your viewers will not get the best impression. You want to get off on the right foot with your visitors.

Become familiar with the tools available to use with WordPress. For example, “KITCHEN SINK” gives you more format options on posts. Your admin pages will also have a “SCREEN OPTIONS” tab. Use this for many formatting options.

When using WordPress, you can even add videos to your site. It’s worth the extra preparation. A lot of web users are drawn to video blogging because of their personal visual preferences. A video is just able to do so much more than the written word can when it comes to communication.

When uploading images, use alt and title text. This adds searchable text to the posts. You can increase the number of SEO phrases and inform visitors of additional information.

Review your content for irrelevant material and remove it. This keeps your site more user-friendly to visitors. Akismet is one of the better plugins for filtering out spam.

WordPress can help you include video blogging on your site. It can takes some extra preparation time, but it can be worth the effort. The majority of web surfers are visual in nature. Videos can sometimes express more than written words, which can make them very powerful.

Unless you change the settings, all your posts will be listed in chronological order. To change it, modify the date. Open a post that you want to appear at the top and change the date located in the upper right corner. Click and change the date, then save the post. This changes where its position will be.

Learn what you need to know before you begin. Planning ahead will give you an advantage when you start. Understand the basics of SEO and content creation before starting your site.

Your pictures are another way to increase your rankings with search engines. Never forget to include a title and the alt attribute. If someone uses Pinterest to pin your image, the title will be captured by the pin.

Make sure that your content is free of fluff. This will keep your site user-friendly to the honest people who are viewing it. You can use a plugin called Akismet to filter spam on your website.

Allow users to email your articles if they want to. This is essential so that they can easily share your content with others. A WordPress email plugin can make this easy.

Remove special characters from your blog post URLs. These characters can make things a real hassle. Try shortening all URLs to avoid overwhelming visitors. Try using only keywords.

Do not use something generic like “admin” when it comes to your username. Using a username like admin or administrator ups your chances of being hacked. This raises the risk in security. Go to your account page and delete usernames that are generic. Use something else.

You might find one day that you think you’ve made a lot of changes to your blog that haven’t been saved. This is likely not the case. Try clearing your browser cache to solve this problem. Your changes should come up if you simply depress the Shift key while you refresh the browser.

Never share your WordPress password. Additionally, only use plugins from reputable sites, checking the reviews posted before you install them. Otherwise, you are vulnerable to hackers and malware.

Improve the greeting at the top of the page on your WordPress website. This makes your site more personal when trying to relate to the visitor. This will allow you to have a page that isn’t too “robotic” so that things can be accessed using the WordPress Greet Box plugin.

Be sure to use titles and descriptions that are targeted. People will first see these through the search engines. They are crucial to your site. Scribe is a great piece of software that you can use. You can edit such items to boost visitor counts.

Your username should never be “admin” or anything similar. Your blog is more vulnerable to attack by bots if you choose this as your username. It’s a security risk. Delete all users who call themselves “administrator” or “admin”. Choose something else.

Make sure your media library isn’t too confusing. You might be tempted to directly upload to the library, but this can make things a mess. Create several folders and place each image in the appropriate one. At later times, when an image is needed, your search time will be greatly reduced.

Use targeted titles and descriptions. These are a few of the first words your audience will see when they find your posts in the search engines. This is why they are important. You can use Scribe SEO software to gain control of these items. You can get more visitors by editing these things.

Make sure that you have the most recent version of any WordPress plugins you use. Plugins can add a lot to your site; they have many unique features. But just like regular software, they get updated. If you do not keep your plugins current, you might miss major upgrades or discover faulty ones.

Make sure your plugins are updated. The plugins are capable of adding great power to your site. Like other software, they are frequently updated. If you do not keep your plugins current, you might miss major upgrades or discover faulty ones.

Don’t install more plugins than you need. Excessive plugins will slow down your computer and lead to wasted time. They can slow down your site to the point that will negatively affect your search engine rank. Websites that run slow aren’t ranked as highly.

Only use the most recent updated WordPress version available. Updates usually contain patches that solve security issues and get rid of vulnerabilities. Hackers seek out older versions of WordPress to find a security crack. That is why it is important to install updates as soon as they come out.

Do not use an old version of WordPress. Updates contain security patches that eliminate vulnerabilities. Using an out of date WordPress version will leave your site vulnerable to malware attacks. So keep your website’s WordPress install up to date to make sure you are as secure as can be.

Don’t forget to back up your blog. Backing up your blog frequently is essential. There is a plugin called Xcloner that will make it easy to backup your blog. For added security, use plugins to make backup copies of your blog on several different locations. You don’t want to take the chance of losing all your blog posts.

Always back your files up! Do it regularly. In WordPress, you can use a plugin for this, such as Xcloner. Use whichever plugin or website you feel comfortable with to keep your blog backed up, however make sure you use more than a single location. It would be devastating to lose your whole blog.

Nobody needs to approve comments manually anymore. Rather, Akismet can do it on your behalf. You can moderate comments individually, but it’s advisable to switch off manual approval and let visitors comment freely. If you don’t, you’re wasting time.

You no longer have to manually approve comments if you don’t want to. Aksimet will take care of it all for you. You can receive an email each time someone leaves a comment, but it’s more efficient to just forgo manual approvals. If you don’t do that, there really is no point in using Akismet.

Don’t use that drop-down menu for post headers. You can use keyboard shortcuts. Pressing the Control key and the numbers from one to six will offer different options. This is a major time saver if you frequently use headers.

Is it hard for you to post during the times you intend to or when you plan to? It is possible to write something ahead of schedule and have it post on a selected date. When you start making a new post, you have the option to schedule a future publication. So go ahead and write your posts when you want and have them post when you want.

When you looking for plugins, be sure to look at the user reviews of the plugin. Anybody who understands how to program can create these plugins. It is important not to use plugins with lots of problems and reported issues. As well, if you see lots of reviews and downloads, it’s likely safe to download.

You don’t have to use the standard dro-down menu when choosing a header. You can use keyboard shortcuts. Using the numbers keys 1 through six with CTRL shows your options. If you frequently use headers, this can be time saver.

You need to enable comments for your WordPress blog. You will start to learn more about your regular visitors and your guests will also feel like they are joining a community. You can even use plugins to have the power to approve comments prior to their publication so you can avoid spammers.

When searching for plugins, check their reviews. Anybody who understands how to program can create these plugins. You don’t want to install a problematic plugin. To help protect your site only use plugins that you have researched with a lot of downloads and high ratings.

Consider highlighting the responses you give to the comments of others. Comments are often filled with questions and concerns. It is easy to lose track of important information. Highlight all author comments using a different color. Finding them will be much easier this way.

Consider adding a button labeled: Read More. Nobody wants to see a wall of text on your main page. Let your readers have the option of clicking to read more. If you do not provide this, your website will not be user friendly.

Just because a plugin has a price, that isn’t a reason you should overlook using it. Think about the value of your time, and then reconsider the price of that plugin. It may be worth the price if it is going to free up a lot of time for you.

Just because a plugin costs money does not mean you shouldn’t use it. Consider the value of your own time, and stack it up against the price of a plugin. If you feel that you are getting a lot for the price, it may be worth it.

Keep in mind that you need not to everything for your blog on your own. If you can bring someone hired or a volunteer, you can save time by doing work done correctly the first time. If that’s the case, you should have this person join you.

You’ll get used to WordPress after a week or so. Use these tricks and tips that you learn here to get the best out of WordPress. Your blog will be professional looking in no time, so you can concentrate more on your writing and readers than on technical matters.

Keep a post unpublished if you have it written out but don’t want to publish yet. This enables you to continue to make changes until it’s ready for the public eye. Once your post is exactly the way you want it, you can publish it.